I did online chat yesterday with AT&T and was able to have them waive the $40 fee.
I was really nice and polite and kindly asked for it to be waived. The rep explained why they charge the fee, and I responded saying I am a longtime customer and thought I might be able to have it waived. She responded they would offer me a onetime credit.
It was nice and easy!

The $30 verizon fee really ticked me off. What does it cover? I upgraded two iphones so expected to pay $60. I have been a verizon customer for a billion years--it almost made me cancel the order entirely, but then decided I would get the phone, make sure I am happy with the size and then call them and beg for mercy.

After reading this forum and many of the responses I figured I had a 50/50 shot of getting the $40 Verizon activation fee waived.

I have 2 lines on my account and have been with Verizon since 2000, I have never used any other service provider.

I called, jumped through 2 or 3 automated systems before getting a person. Like this forum suggested, I stated my piece and remained very polite. The representative made it clear right from the start that it was very unlikely that he'd be able to get the activation fee waived. He admitted to me that Verizon had not only recently increased their upgrade and activation fee to $40 early in 2015, but now also required the workers themselves to pay it. (True or not, who knows, he just stated his own frustration, could be a tactic but it didn't come off that way)

However, he said he might be able to offer some other kind of discount, and would like to check for me. I gave him the account password and after a short time he came back with much more than I'd asked for. $20 off each line per month for an entire year. No changes to the account itself were made.

I was paying $142 and some change, so that knocks my bill down to nearly $100 for two lines with unlimited text, talk, and something like 4GB of data... of which we've never have used more than 3GB in any given month. We still have to go spend ~$500 to upgrade and activate our phones to the most recent models but that's a personal choice on our part... we could get free phones and pay under $100 for activation.

After the call ended, I asked if I could leave him positive feedback. I had him put me through to his supervisor and just let her know that I'd been considering taking one of my lines off of Verizon but that this most likely keeps me around another 2 years. If anything... maybe the next caller will catch them in a good mood.